A solid-state cyclic image recording device which has a layered structure consisting of a conductive transparent substrate, a thin photoconductive layer, a thin deformable elastomer layer and a deformable electrode such as a thin flexible metal layer has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,716,359. When an electric field is placed between the conductive substrate and the deformable electrode, the elastomer will deform into a diffracting surface relief pattern corresponding to the image light distribution of an image focused on the photoconductive layer. Light modulated by the deformation of the elastomer surface can be converted to an intensity distribution similar to the original image by means of a simple Schleiren optics system. As described in the article "The Ruticon Family of Eraseable Image Recording Devices", N. K. Sheridon, IEEE Transitions on Electron Devices, ED-19, September 1972, pages 1003 to 1010, the image recording device, modified to incorporate a Ronchi ruling on the conductive substrate before the photoconductive layer and referred to in the article as a Ruticon, may be utilized as an optical buffer storage device. The optical buffer storage device may be utilized in a word processing system to temporarily store information thereon. For example, in text editing systems commercially available, information to be printed as hard copy is first displayed on a display device, such as a cathode ray tube, in a manner whereby corrections to a line of text, for example, can be made to the information displayed prior to its reproduction in hard copy. A feature of text editing systems is that selected portions of the display can be edited. In the image recording device described in the aforementioned patent, selective erasive, or editing, of the image formed thereon has not been achieved. The entire image formed on the prior art cyclic image recording device of the type described hereinabove is erased by flooding the photoconductive layer with light or removing the field across the elastomer. Obviously, complete, instead of selective, erasure of the image is a device characteristic which substantially eliminates the usefulness of the device in a text editing system.